I Am Who I Am
by Flopsy
Summary: To choose the darkness over light, to choose to be remembered for the fear I spread, to choose a path that can only lead to horror. Why would a person choose the path of darkness, why did I, Tom Marvolo Riddle choose the path I now walk, because I am who


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I have anything to do with it.

I AM WHO I AM

To go through a life without ever having been loved can only be considered ten degrees below tragic. To go through a life where the only other significant people in it called you their acquaintance or their charge can be quite demeaning. To go through a life where all you have ever been is unknown, hated or feared, that is the worst.

Conceived in love, born into hatred, that's where this life began. Spawned from one narrow minded, powerless Muggle and one naïve, disowned witch, a hero was born.

Not yet a hero but a hero I will be. My past has defined who I am about to become. From the day I was born a curse has been held over my life, the curse of the unknown, the curse of the past I will never remember, yet could never forget. My past is my curse and it is a curse that after today will be left behind.

In my past there is much I do not know. There is what I do know but the details which were told to me are vacant and diminutive. The source from which I received the small amount of the tale I do know can only be described as untrustworthy and an old gossip. This woman had an elaborate tale which she told. In parts it was clear she was going over the top, she told a story not an event, but there was a part where what she told could only have been the truth.

As she told this part I believe was a true and accurate account, the glint which had possessed her beady grey eyes had disappeared and true, compassionate hatred had shone through. A wall was lifted and only the truest of true emotions could be seen in the depths of her orbs.

"Your father abandoned your mother," she had spoken with much contempt in her voice "I rang the man myself, your mother had told me not to bother but after the complications arose and she was slipping away, I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that there was no other option," the woman had kept her eyes trained on my lips, never once looking me in my eyes.

"When I told him who I was and the reason I rang he went off, yelling about how he wanted nothing to do with her or her sort even if one of them sprang from him, whatever he meant by that, then he hung up and I never tried calling again, you didn't deserve to go to a man like that,"

"A man did come to visit you and your mother though, and until this day I never realised your father and this man were one and the same. He came in a few hours after Payton, your mother had passed. He had said his name was Andrew and he was a friend of Payton's. As I knew your fathers name to be Tom, I never made the connection. I took him to your mother, she was still in her bed awaiting the transfer to the morgue. All that he did was stand ten feet away from her and watch her face, he didn't touch her or even say a goodbye to her, he just watched. His eye's, hard when he had arrived, had gone soft on the sight of her, he did not weep, but a single solitary tear had trickled its way down his cheek, that was it. When he turned away the hardness was back and he left never even once looking at you,"

After that the woman had continued with her tale about what she knew of my life, the glint had returned and the elaborateness had continued. I had all the information I needed though, the reason I grew up the way I did was because of a Muggle and his fear of anything different. I grew up as an orphan even though in truth I was really no orphan, I had a living, breathing father, a father who condemned me to the life I have had to endure, a life in an orphanage where you are pitied for who you are, a life of injustice, as you are not trusted because of where you came from. The fact that the man who abandoned my mother and his son, the man who condemned me to this fate I call my own, still lives on, in a life of freedom and happiness no less, was not something which sat well with me. It was that realisation which turned my own eyes into the eyes of that mans, hard as stone, cold as ice and as unfeeling as ever.

Before I left I asked the woman of the story just one question, "You knew my mother well yes?"

"I knew her just that night but she told me that you would be back one day and she told me this story, I followed up on what she couldn't," the woman had answered nodding for me to continue.

"Who was she; I mean to ask, what was her name, her full name?" I had asked that question with a sense of longing in my tone. It was a longing which accurately displayed my emotions, for all my life I only ever dreamed of meeting the woman who gave her life for my own.

"Payton Miranda Slytherin, if you want to know more about her I suggest you ask your Grandfather,"

At first the last name I heard her give did not click, I was more concerned with the latter she had let slip.

"My grandfather, he lives?"

"Yes he does. Marvolo Slytherin, from where you got your middle name. I'm afraid that he does not have long left young Tom, but I am sure he would like to see his grandson before death comes and takes him from this land,"

After that I bid the woman fair well and went on my way. I met my grandfather later that same week. He was a horrid old man with not much to say. He did tell me this though, he told me I was the first Slytherin to attend Hogwarts since my ancestor Salazar Slytherin had left. He told me of the tradition that all Slytherin's be home schooled and about how my mother was disowned when she chose that despicable Muggle over her own world. He told me of the ancient myth, past down through the generations of my family line, the myth of The Chamber of Secrets, he told the whole story and just what I could do to find out if it were true.

Three weeks before that conference and I probably would not have gone through with finding the facts of the Chamber, but my meeting with that woman had changed my opinion of who was worthy of such privileges as learning magic and who was not.

I had my thoughts on it but never in my past had I ever thought to act on it. Now I would act, I, with a little help from my now deceased Grandfather, had discovered it was what I was born to do.

I went back to school after that summer of revelations and the little boy who had walked into the halls of the school the previous year became my alias. The person I had become over the summer was who I continued to be.

For the next five years I researched three things. They were my family and their history, all the magic that the school had to offer, so I could become as powerful as possible while there, and The Chamber of Secrets.

In my sixth year I set a plan I had spent those five years conjuring to use. I opened the Chamber of Secrets and wrecked havoc on the halls of Hogwarts. I set the monster within the chamber loose, a basilisk I had discovered and I petrified the Mudbloods who did not deserve what they were been given. Finally, towards the end of the year, I committed my first murder. I ridded the world of one unworthy soul. A Mudblood died.

By the time school had let out that year I had forsaken the blame of the death onto another unworthy magic wielder and had gotten away still almost completely trusted within the school. The transfiguration teacher Albus Dumbledore was one Muggle-loving fool and it was only he who gave me the feeling he could see right through my alias and into the person I really was.

The summer came and brought me to this very moment in time. Right at this very moment I am scaling along the fence beside my father's home. Five minutes ago I was in his home, torturing him with words of who I am. My grandparents did not even know I existed until that moment in that house where I told them the facts their imprudent son neglected to. Five minutes ago I committed my second, third and forth murder. Five minutes ago my foolish father and his snobbish family were bade good riddance to.

There was something torturing me as I tortured my blood and that was the resemblance to that Muggle fool which I possess. It was just then as I looked into the foolish Muggle's fear stricken eyes that I realised why the woman who told me my past would not look into my own. They were my father's, right down to the last vein. As I looked into those eyes inside that house I decided something, I would change myself, I would scrape every last resemblance of my father from my flesh and replace it with something unique and something which represents the horror within my very soul. It would be a change I would make to further achieve my ambitions. This world will be my own one day and it will be moulded perfectly into the shape it should be. If I have to use fear to get what I want, well I am a Slytherin, that's exactly what I will do.

As I walk away from my father's final resting place I know I have done it, I have made the mental transition from poor pathetic Tom Marvolo Riddle to Lord Voldemort, heir of the great Salazar Slytherin. I am who I am. I will have allies, I will have enemies, I will never be loved but I have never been loved, I will be feared by all but most of all I will be great and I will be remembered. I will be a hero to what will be referred to by most as the wrong side of a war.

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An old dusty gravel track, a track I have ridden on but have never set foot on, not until this moment in time. At this moment in this hour on this day I am walking a walk that can go two separate ways. One day I might be calling the walk I now walk, the walk to glory and one day I may be calling it the road to my defeat, if I get the chance to call it anything at all. I am on my way to face off with my foe, my equal in all aspects of life. I am walking into a battle I am sure will be my last, with the result of the forthcoming I will either become what I have strived so hard to be, leader of all, or everything I have worked so hard for will fall into the history books and go nowhere but there.

My red eyes, they burn with hatred, reflecting the fear of others, the evilness of me, and the horror which resides within my being. My nose, once long and thin now constantly flared, my face, once handsome and clean, now snakelike and that of pure evil. There is not a remnant of my father left on my exterior, his blood still runs through my veins but that is all.

I am approaching the doors of the castle I have always loved to detest, to face off with a man so young yet so old. It was I who made him that way, I marked him as my equal and he was forced to grow up just like me. We are alike in so many ways, yet different in every way possible. I know I will not come away the victor of this fight. This man fights with compassion, for love and peace; he is a hero to the light. I fight for greed, for hatred and for fear; I am a hero, but a hero to the darkness. I will not be the victor, but I will always be remembered for who I am. I am Lord Voldemort and that is who I will be to the end.

A/N: Thank you all for reading, please leave a review, flames are fine.


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